Tag: afa

Recently, I’ve been thinking of how May’N ‘s career seems to be going down. Her “May’N Street” mini album especially. Those new songs that weren’t related to Macross Frontier, especially May’N Space, are bad. For now, I will still stand by this statement.

As I thought more about why, I realize that perhaps she owes half her fame from Sheryl Nome, one of the heroines in the anime series. Because of that, May’N seems have an image for singing emotional songs like Northern Cross, Lion, Diamond Crevasse, What ’bout my star. Not hippy or happy songs.

(And perhaps those songs are so good, to me at least, that they’ve set a standard so high it’s hard to reach with the new songs.)

Yea, I like the character Sheryl Nome more than the person behind her singing voice. I ought to be ashamed for calling myself a fan of May’N. (But I really do like her singing, just like how I like KOTOKO‘s.)

But because of the anime, I’m unconciously denying her songs that weren’t “sung” by Sheryl Nome.

During the AFA09 concert, when it was May’N ‘s turn to perform, she started off with Pink Monsoon, a new song from the Macross Frontier movie. I accepted it because I knew it was from the anime.

After this first song, there were a few new songs which I’ve never heard of and I immediately denied those songs simply because I assumed they weren’t related to the anime.

I even justified this by telling people how the crowd responded strongly when May’N started singing songs from the anime.

Also, it could’ve just been me but I’ve also noticed how disappointed she looked when she sees how the crowd reacted strongly to the Macross F songs. I thought to myself, “She must’ve felt sad that her sudden rise in fame was because of a fictional character.”

I suddenly felt it was good. Though honestly, during the concert I did enjoy it.

But now I like it more knowing it was from the Macross F movie.

So embarassed at myself.

And one more very embarassing thing happened during the concert. In between songs, May’N said things like “I love Singapore!” to which the crowd responded by cheering. Then for one of the questions, she started speaking in Japanese and asked “Are there anyone from Japan?”, I understood the question so I kept quiet.

But half the audience cheered, and May’N gave a strange laugh.

Even though I kept quiet, just thinking about this incident made me very embarassed, lol

As I had Japanese class in the morning, I joined up with my friends in the afternoon.

First event for me was a demonstration of a karaoke machine with anime songs, and a “voice-acting” machine, Afreko.

For Afreko, firstly users choose from a variety of anime, and next a scene from a variety from that anime. They are then shown the actual footage with the original voices, then recording begins and they start mimicking the voices from that scene, then the footage is replayed with their recorded voices. A final screen shows their “synchro rate” and gives a rating.

I don’t know how the demonstrators who got a 0% on synchronization can get an “A” rating.

Next event, seiyuus from the anime K-on! came on stage to do a live-dubbing of 3 scenes from the anime. Mio’s seiyuu didn’t show up. The seiyuu for Azusa showed up instead. I’m curious of the reason but never got to find out.

There was a Q&A session for these seiyuus and the only question I liked came from a Japan. It was more of a request, asking the seiyuus to voice act their favourite lines from the anime. Lots of moe here.

The next few events weren’t of any interest to me. I split off from my friends to head down to Bugis’ Kinokuniya and do some manga shopping as it’s the last day of their 20% off promotion for members. Went back to Suntec and shot a few photos of the cosplayers there, joined up with my friends and had some rest until the concert for day 2 begins.

About the seating positions, I like how we have seat numbers now. But the silly thing for the online booking thing is they don’t allow you to choose seats and don’t let you buy more than 1 set of tickets (1 set = 2 days concert) each booking. The seat numbers are random and some are different for both days. Mine was the 3rd row from the stage, right in the middle.

Had a good crowd around me who also cheered and shouted out with me.

We started off with Fukuyama Yoshiki’s performance. He’s part of JAM Project and I only know him as the singing voice for Nekki Basara from the anime, Macross 7.

Next up is May’N. I am quite a fan of her Macross Frontier songs. Lion, Northern Cross, etc. She began her performance with Pink Monsoon. A song from the upcoming Macross Frontier movie. It was good (note the use of the word “good”).

Then she sang some songs from her single and album which I feel, didn’t suit her at all. And I couldn’t find a single song that’s enjoyable but I shook my lightstick (that’s given to concert ticket buyers for free) anyway.

When she started singing Macross Frontier songs, oh god, the audience went berserk. So did I.

The performance ended with both May’N and Fukuyama performing together on stage. First song is Diamond Crevasse from Macross Frontier where Fukuyama played the music on his guitar. The second one is Dynamite Explosion from Macross 7.

After the concert, we had a chat and drink. Each of us then made our way home. 3 of us, including me, went to queue up for the taxi. It was just outside a 7-11 store.

That’s when I spotted Fukuyama in the store with another guy, probably his manager or bodyguard.

Alerted my friends and tried to stop one from screaming, lol. He’s a huge fan of him.

As both of them came out, we bowed to him and exchanged greetings as subtly as possible because we’re in public and there’s a lot of other people in the queue who don’t know him. The 1 hour+ wait for the taxi became worth it.

This year’s Anime Festival Asia 2009 felt a lot better than 2008’s. Firstly, there wasn’t any queue at the booth for people who bought the concert tickets (concert ticket buyers get free entry) so we were able to get in pretty quickly at around 10am.

I didn’t buy much this year. Just a small $30 Ranka Lee figurine and an AFA09, “I love anisong” (anime song) $45 T-Shirt to show off that I was there, lol

Day 1.

Watched preview of Mamoru Hosoda’s Summer Wars anime movie which will begin showing in Singapore next year around Feb 25.

As my group secured seats near the front, we split into 2 to take turns to secure those seats and also to have space to leave our bags and the things we bought at AFA.

Malaysia’s team had a funny skit but ended with an internet meme which is totally not related to anime. It was the funniest team but half the audience probably didn’t know about that American meme about Kanye hijacking Taylor Swift’s speech.

But then something silly (it seemed that way for me) happened.

The Singapore team, with the guy cosplaying as a Gundam mecha won both Special (2nd) prize (BROTHER Sewing machine) and Grand (1st) prize (A pair of return tickets to Japan). And there were only 2 prizes for this competition.

The special prize should have at least gone to the Philippine or Indonesia team.

I know it’s really hard to make a Gundam mecha costume. The skit didn’t feel impressive to me, probably because I haven’t watched that series. Also the mecha on stage just seemed to be swinging around slowly and repeating his moves, dropping a few armor parts from the “damage”.

After that I went around shooting cosplayers and explored the booths. On my way back for Danny Choo‘s event, my friend who bought some of Shoko Nakagawa’s (Shoko-tan) CDs asked me to join him to queue up and get Shoko-tan to sign his CD for him. Everyone received a piece of paper to write their names on for Shoko to write the names and sign.

I missed Danny Choo’s event but it seemed that he was just going through presentations he’s given before like talking about his website, which I’ve already seen when Animax invited him to give a talk about blogging some time earlier this year.

After that we had late lunch, which will also be our dinner, at Marina Square, and relaxed until the concert at night.

This year’s concert had 4 artists, 2 more than last year’s. For the first night, we started off with Shoko Nakagawa’s performance.

Her first song sent everyone, including me, screaming in joy; Cruel Angel’s Thesis (Evangelion TV anime series OP.) Perfect choice especially when we’ve just watched Eva 2.0.

She sang Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagen songs and had her manager(?) help her take a photo of her with the audience with her camera phone while she’s on stage. My seat was the 3rd row, right at the middle, which unfortunately is also right behind her in that photo.